Queen Victoria

by Bartley, Paula;

  Even today, people remain fascinated by the relationship and want to know whether or not the Queen had an affair with, or even married, John Brown. Some believe that Queen Victoria’s large sexual appetite was assuaged by Brown who became her morganatic husband. This theory was apparently confirmed by the rumoured deathbed confession of Rev McLeod, Dean of the Royal Chapel and trusted friend of Queen Victoria, who claimed that he had married the couple in Scotland. These are, of course, speculations. Indeed, there is strong evidence to suggest otherwise: the Queen may once have enjoyed physical intimacy with Albert but after the birth of nine children, a prolapsed womb, and possibly suffering from early stages of the menopause, her sexual desires may have diminished. More likely still, it is common among the aristocracy to have a favoured servant, someone who enjoys a familiarity with their employer and who is allowed liberties denied others. In many ways, Brown played the part of the traditional fool, a well-loved character and symbol of common sense and honesty, who enjoyed a privileged status within the court. Fools had the leeway to criticise their boss, ridicule pomposity and deliver a few home truths, saying things that no other character in their social bracket could possibly say.

  Certainly, the evidence that Queen Victoria and John Brown were lovers is ambiguous at best. On the one hand, Queen Victoria spoke of Brown as a servant. When he died, in March 1883, the Queen wrote in her journal that her son Leopold ‘broke the dreadful news to me, that my good, faithful Brown had passed away early this morning. Am terribly upset by this loss, which removes one, who was so devoted and attached to my service and who did so much for my personal comfort. It is the loss not only of a servant, but of a good friend.’20 In her will, Victoria stated that she hoped to ‘meet those who have so faithfully and so devotedly served me especially good John Brown and good Annie Macdonald’. However, when Brown died, the Queen preserved his room as he left it, had a fresh flower put on his pillow each day, commissioned statues and busts of him and was only thwarted from publishing a book about Brown’s life when her family objected. When she died, Victoria was buried not only with mementoes of Albert and her children but also with a lock of John Brown’s hair, a photograph of Brown in her left hand and his mother’s wedding ring on the third finger of her right hand – the wedding ring finger of German women – all of which suggests that the relationship had developed beyond that of mere servant.

  Today, many remain curious about the relationship between Queen Victoria and John Brown, but is it historically important? Dorothy Thompson suggests that the Brown controversy remains significant because it illustrates the double standards required of men and women in this period and throws a light on Victorian hypocrisy. It was accepted that kings – William IV, George IV – might have extra-marital affairs, but not queens and especially not the previously morally righteous Queen Victoria. In Thompson’s view ‘if it could have been shown that the queen . . . had indulged in a sexual liaison . . . a great many cherished taboos and judgements would have been challenged’.21 Women, even those as high and mighty as Queen Victoria, would perhaps be viewed as lustful creatures rather than the domestic, passive and unsullied characters of popular belief.

  We will never know for certain if Queen Victoria married John Brown but we do know that the growing friendship between the two helped the Queen to accept Albert’s death. On 10 February 1865, the day which would have been Victoria’s silver wedding day, she wrote ‘oh! To think of what it would have been and what it is! The contrast is too fearful. Still in the midst of my crushing sorrow and longing for the past, I do feel that it is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all!’22 It was soon clear that the Queen was ‘getting over’, or at least beginning to accept the death of Albert. Her diaries contain less of ‘woe is me’ and more about the events she was now enjoying, like the gillie’s ball, children’s birthday parties, watching her children play charades, playing the piano and singing and listening to music.

  Lord Palmerston: 1861–1865

  The death of Prince Albert was a turning point for the Queen, politically as well as personally. Between 1837 and 1841 Lord Melbourne had influenced the Queen; between 1841 and 1861, Prince Albert. Now Victoria reigned alone. As Frank Hardie observes, only after Albert’s death can Victoria ‘be seen acting as a constitutional monarch entirely on her own responsibility’.23 The Whigs, now referred to as Liberals, remained in the ascendant. Lord Palmerston continued as Queen Victoria’s prime minister until his death in 1865 and was followed by Lord Russell (1865–6). The period ended with two conservative prime ministers: Lord Derby (1866–8) and Disraeli (1868).

  After Albert’s death, Queen Victoria began to adopt the mantle of Great Matriarch of Europe as more and more of her family married into the ruling royal families. She took a lively interest in the marriages, births, illnesses and deaths of her increasingly extended family, trying to patch up family quarrels or taking sides in them. Unfortunately, sometimes Victoria’s subjective family preferences conflicted with the objectivity increasingly expected of a British monarch. The Queen and her prime minister clashed for the last time over Victoria’s expressed partiality for Germany and Palmerston’s sympathies for Denmark.

  Foreign policy: Schleswig-Holstein 1863–1864

  Queen Victoria remained especially interested in those aspects of foreign affairs closely related to her family. At times her personal involvement was so intense that she could not summon up the detachment which was more and more expected of a constitutional monarch – the growing notion that British monarchs should be above politics was not one she seemed to share. Jane Ridley observes that ‘the fact that the monarch was supposed not to pursue a foreign policy of her own but support her government’s policy worried her not at all’.24 The Schleswig-Holstein question in particular tormented the Queen, and it was here that she made her first political intervention since the death of Albert. At the time, Schleswig-Holstein was an independent Duchy, linked to Denmark. However, because it consisted mainly of German speakers, Prussia aspired to annex it. In November 1863, when the Danish King died and a new one ascended the throne, the Prussians demanded self-determination for the German speakers living in Schleswig-Holstein.25

  For Queen Victoria, the Schleswig-Holstein question was as much a family question as a political one. At such times, Queen Victoria’s morbid passivity in some areas of royal activity contrasted sharply with the determined energy she exhibited when her personal interests were concerned. She made no attempt to remain neutral when her two eldest children took opposing sides in the Prussian–Danish conflict. Her eldest daughter, Vicky, was married to the Prussian heir to the throne and took Prussia’s side, while Bertie was married to Alexandra, the King of Denmark’s daughter, and favoured Denmark. At the time, Alexandra was expecting her first baby and living nearby at Frogmore, a house set in the grounds of Windsor Castle. Victoria recognised her daughter-in-law’s anxiety but was unsympathetic to the Danish point of view. She lamented that ‘Oh! If Bertie’s wife was only a good German and not a Dane! . . . It is terrible to have the poor boy on the wrong side, and aggravates my sufferings greatly.’26 She reminded Bertie that his whole family were German, that he was half-German and that he must never be a Danish partisan ‘or you put yourself against your whole family and against your Mother and Sovereign – who has been as impartial as anyone ever was’.27 Queen Victoria’s ‘impartiality’, of course was self-delusion as the Queen was wholly on the German side, writing to her eldest daughter that her ‘heart and sympathies are all German’.28 The Queen’s opinion was not the voice of the experienced constitutional monarch expressing balanced and carefully considered opinions – it was the opinion of a ‘violent partisan inspired by emotion rather than reason’.29

  In 1852 the London Protocol, signed by Austria, France, Prussia, Russia and Britain, had guaranteed the independence of Schleswig-Holstein. Any invasion of its territory was breaking the terms of the contract. Palmerston, who feared Prussian expansion, wanted to help Denmar
k and even discussed sending troops to defend the beleaguered nation. He believed that if Prussia thought that the British government was committed to the integrity of Denmark, peace might be preserved. In contrast, the Queen insisted that Britain must not help Denmark because she could not inflict ‘upon her subjects all the horrors of war’. She impressed upon her government her ‘aversion to being dragged step by step into a war . . . for Germany was as good a friend to us as Denmark’.30 This highly moralising approach to the Schleswig-Holstein question serves merely to demonstrate how the Queen’s concern for her subjects was just a convenient argument to bolster her pro-Prussian views. Moreover, she persistently tried to alter the course of events by trying to influence the opinions of individual Cabinet members by secretly corresponding with them, actions which the Queen knew was exceeding the bounds of constitutional propriety.

  Unfortunately, Queen Victoria did not recognise that Germany was changing. She held on to Albert’s dream of a liberal Germany, united by Prussia, which would be ruled by her son-in-law Fritz when King Wilhelm I died. In reality, Minister President Otto von Bismarck, a conservative statesman who dominated Prussia, wanted to unite at least northern Germany by ‘blood and iron’ and create a new royal state. In many ways the Queen unwittingly helped Bismarck by obstructing her government’s attempts to help Denmark. This isolated the small country, making it feasible for Bismarck to invade Denmark without fear of reprisal from Britain and take another step towards German unity.

  Palmerston recognised only too well the danger the monarchy faced if the Queen was thought to favour Prussia over Denmark. In January 1864 he wrote to the Queen in his capacity as prime minister, reminding her that ‘he is sure that your Majesty will never forget that you are Sovereign of Great Britain, and that the honour of your Majesty’s Crown and the interests of your Majesty’s dominions will always be the guide of your Majesty’s conduct’.31 He told her bluntly to stop the gossip in her household that the Queen favoured Prussia. A few days later, in a long, well-reasoned, politically informed and erudite letter, Palmerston advised his sovereign that Prussia seemed ‘bent upon wantonly inflicting those horrors upon the unoffending and peaceful Danish population. The Germans are acting like a strong man who thinks he has got a weak man in a corner, and that he can bully and beat him to his heart’s content.’32 He warned the Queen that ‘if Denmark was to be dismembered, all Treaties might be thrown into the fire as waste paper, or used to wrap up cartridges’.33 Palmerston’s political acumen, his immense knowledge of foreign affairs and his understanding of diplomatic complexities made the Queen feel out of her depth. At times like this, when the Queen found herself outclassed by the political sophistication of Palmerston, her political uneasiness was sometimes expressed petulantly: on one occasion she asked her private secretary to reply to one of Palmerston’s long, detailed and logically argued missives by saying that the ‘Queen has been unwell all day . . . and has directed me to acknowledge the receipt of your letter’.34

  In February 1864 Prussian and Austrian forces invaded Schleswig-Holstein. Prussia occupied Schleswig and claimed it as its own, while Austria took control of Holstein. The British government was not prepared to respond to Prussian and Austrian aggression with anything more than diplomatic platitudes and accordingly remained outside the conflict. Denmark, in the face of an overwhelming military force, surrendered Schleswig-Holstein. It was a humiliating defeat for Denmark but for the Prussians it marked the first formal annexation of territory in the move towards a united Germany. Palmerston wrote to the King of the Belgians, Victoria’s Uncle Leopold, that the annexation of a small state was a shameful abuse of power by Prussia and Austria. The events of the war, Palmerston maintained, did not form a ‘page in German history which any honourable or generous German hereafter will look back upon without a blush’.35 In 1866, Schleswig-Holstein was incorporated into Prussia. The Germans began their successful climb to national unity, with Germany emerging as the most powerfully military state in Europe – an outcome which would eventually threaten European peace.

  It appeared as if the monarchy was out of step with a large section of the British population who supported the besieged Denmark. Many people objected to the fact that a great power had violated the sovereignty of a small state unable to defend itself against the might of the Prussian army. There were hostile comments in the press about the Queen’s pro-German sympathies. The London Review protested that the policy of the government was inspired by deference ‘to the personal wishes of the Sovereign in a matter in which the Constitution makes her despotic’.36 Queen Victoria was even reproached in the House of Lords. On 26 May 1864, the Conservative Lord Ellenborough who had once enjoyed a friendly relationship with Queen Victoria complained that ‘in all public questions relating to Germany, her Majesty’s Ministers have much difficulty in carrying out a purely English policy’.37

  Queen Victoria’s partisanship, and the negative public reaction to it, alarmed Palmerston. He even sent the Queen a newspaper which maintained

  that an impression is beginning to be created that your Majesty has expressed personal opinions on the affairs of Denmark and Germany which have embarrassed the course of the Government. . . . It would be a great evil if public opinion were to divest your Majesty of that proper and essential protection which the Constitution secures for the Sovereign by making the responsible Ministers answerable for all that is done or not done; and if your Majesty’s personal opinions and views were to become the objects of criticism or attack.38

  The Queen, rarely willing to acknowledge even just criticism, tersely replied that she ‘exercised her functions for the good of the country alone’ and must disregard unjust remarks in obscure papers.39 It was evident that the relationship between Queen Victoria and Lord Palmerston had reached an all-time low.

  When it became publicly known that Queen Victoria had, without the knowledge of her ministers, written letters of support to the Prussians, she was accused of behaving unconstitutionally. Some blamed the Queen for the war because her obvious pro-German stance had encouraged Prussia to be aggressive. Of course, it is hard to measure the precise impact of the Queen’s intervention in the Danish question. Even so the Queen’s well-known German sympathies might have played a part in the calculations of the Prussian government as to whether or not they should invade Denmark. Just as importantly, Queen Victoria’s persistent attempts to undermine the policies of her government represented not just a disagreeable state of affairs but also a potential despotic threat to the developing British constitution.

  The Queen, however, dismissed the concerns of her critics, believing that ‘people are so foolishly mad and excited . . . for they run away with an idea of the great oppressing the weak, and talk a heap of nonsense’.40 Indeed, Victoria rejected all criticism, often pleading womanly weakness. She complained when one Lord insinuated

  indirectly that I . . . had prevented the Govt from doing what it ought to have done and wished. What a cruel accusation, against a poor unprotected widow, who is no longer sheltered by the love and wisdom of her beloved Husband, when I only live on to work and toil for the good of my country and am half torn to pieces with anxiety, sorry and responsibility, seeing this Country lower itself and get more and more into difficulties, – and above all, have always sought to be so impartial! Such monstrous calumnies have made me feel quite ill.41

  Here, as elsewhere, Queen Victoria shows herself to be a good advocate, willing to use any stratagem to get her own way.

  Familial and European politics became even more complicated when Victoria decided that her third daughter, the 24-year-old Helena, should marry the penniless 35-year-old Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenberg. In 1848, Christian’s family had sided with Prussia when it threatened Danish autonomy. Bertie, concerned about the feelings of his Danish wife when yet another German prince was added to his relatives, protested about the marriage. Victoria took no notice as she was more concerned about her own welfare. She wan
ted Helena to marry someone who would make their home in Britain, insisting that she ‘must have Lenchen with me for the greater part of the year when she is married’.42 Prince Christian, who was impoverished, had no choice but to agree. On 5 July 1866 Queen Victoria ‘led Lenchen, who walked between Bertie and me, and I gave her away’43 ostensibly because she felt that she ‘was the only one to do it. I never could let one of my sons take their father’s place while I live.’44 In fact, Bertie threatened to boycott the wedding altogether. He had objected to the match and only attended the marriage ceremony after a lot of pressure.

  Queen Victoria gave more support to Palmerston’s government when family interests were not at stake. Indeed, the Queen is credited with helping to heal the broken relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom. During the American Civil War, Palmerston’s government had allowed two war ships to be built in British shipyards for the Southern Confederates; one ship, the Alabama, was used to attack the Unionists in the North. The Unionists held Britain responsible for the damage that the Alabama inflicted on northern forces and compensation was called for – the Americans were later awarded reparations of 15.5 million dollars by an international tribunal. But bad feeling remained between the two countries, overcome largely through the intervention of Queen Victoria who worked behind the scenes to ameliorate the dispute. On 26 April 1865, Victoria received ‘dreadful news’45 from America, that Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated. The Queen was asked to write a personal letter to Lincoln’s widow as ‘a very good effect would be produced in conciliating the feelings of the United States’.46 Victoria complied. In her letter the Queen told the widowed Mrs Lincoln: